Railway Track And Maintenance

Railroad tracks take quite a beating, with countless tons of cold steel and freight rumbling over them day and night, wearing down rails and vibrating ties loose from their ballasts. This book reveals the special machinery railroads use to maintain and mend tracks and other property, as well as how the machines were developed and how they work. Each chapter tackles a different piece of maintenance equipment like tie pullers, spike drivers and rail grinders. Photos illustrate the machines in action, while detail shots depict the "business end" of each. This one-of-a-kind title is perfect for railfans and modelers.

TCRP report 155 provides guidelines and descriptions for the design of various common types of light rail transit (LRT) track. The track structure types include ballasted track, direct fixation ("ballastless") track, and embedded track. The report considers the characteristics and interfaces of vehicle wheels and rail, tracks and wheel gauges, rail sections, alignments, speeds, and track moduli. The report includes chapters on vehicles, alignment, track structures, track components, special track work, aerial structures/bridges, corrosion control, noise and vibration, signals, traction power, and the integration of LRT track into urban streets.

Railway Track Engineering presents conventional methods of track construction, maintenance and monitoring, along with modern sophisticated track machines. It also comprehensively covers design details and specifications of important track componentsChanges in the revised edition include:Explanation of the hitherto little understood phenomenon of rolling contact fatigue in rails and practical steps to deal with it. New technology of alumino-thermic rail welding. New guidelines for ultrasonic rail flaw detection. Ballastless track for metros, mainlines and washable aprons. Track standards for ultra high-speed lines in India. Track structure for Dedicated Freight Corridors. Technology of fully mechanized track construction with the deployment of simple track laying equipment to highly sophisticated track-laying trains.Richly illustrated with photographs and line drawings, this book will be useful to professionals and students.

By far the greatest proportion of the total cost of maintaining the infrastructure of a railway arises from the track, Modern trains are lighter, travel faster and are much easier to derail than before. Therefore it is vital that track is maintained adequately.This volume shows how railways can be kept running using the minimum necessary maintenance, taking into account the environmental conditions and the type and volume of traffic using the railway.

A proper quality of a track and other infrastructure objects represents a basic requirement for train safety and punctuality. Most of the physical systems and their components deteriorate over time. This affects performance and may lead to failures. Albert Einstein said, “You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.” Only if we understand how the whole system works, taking into account its imperfections and how they influence its quality and performance will we be able to learn the rules of the game and “play better.” The book provides the readers with the necessary functional knowledge of track behaviour and comprehensively covers the function of the various track components, their interaction as elements of the track system, as well as the interaction of the track with railway vehicles. By presenting important tools for a deep understanding of track-behaviour this book aims to be a reference guide for infrastructure managers and to help them to find ways improving track quality for optimum long-term behaviour.

This thesis can be divided into two parts. In Part I we are dealing with the problem of finding optimal time intervals for carrying out routine maintenance works and large projects in such a way that the track possession costs and maintenance costs are minimized. In Part II of this thesis we focus on rescheduling of the rolling stock in the passenger railways due to changing circumstances and more precisely on the Rolling Stock Rebalancing Problem (RSRP). The main objectives of this thesis are formulated as follows: 1. Review the existing literature on maintenance planning in relation with production. 2. Identify some tactical and operational railway infrastructure maintenance planning problems and develop operations research models for providing decision support. Investigate the effect of planning railway infrastructure maintenance on the train operation and identify rolling stock planning problems that occur during planned infrastructure maintenance. 3. Analyze the considered models, investigate their computational complexity, propose solution methods and test the solutions of the models.